Unbearable
by Smileyfax
Summary: Daria is chased by a menacing figure from her past.
1. Chapter 1

One day, as Daria left Lawndale High, a chill ran down her spine. She looked all around to see if anything was amiss, but there was nothing except the usual - her fellow classmates, filtering out of the building in order to head to their cars, walk home, or otherwise take the bus. She noticed a van she hadn't seen in the parking lot before, parked at the far end of the lot, beyond the staff and student parking, but Daria shrugged it off, pegging it up to being owned by a parent who was picking their child up that day. She asked Jane about it, but Jane had no idea who the van belonged to. It certainly wasn't the Tank - the van was a tan color, not black and dinged all to hell. As she walked out of sight of the high school, she took one look back and saw that the van was still parked, even though (as far as she knew) all the other students had left.

The next day, the van was parked across the street from the Pizza King, where Daria and Jane had their usual post-school pizza. This bothered Daria; Jane could tell something was wrong, but Daria refused to answer, and so Jane let it drop.

She was out shopping with her father the day after that. (Her mother had bribed her into going, so that she could intercept any of Jake's wilder purchases that he declared would 'taste good' in his 'food'). While following along beside him, she saw the van parked (again) near the far end of the parking lot. She noticed for the first time the van's tinted windows, and wanted very badly at that moment for the windows to not be tinted, so that she could see into the van and find out who - if anybody at all - was inside.

The fourth day, upon leaving school again (alone this time - Jane had to serve some detention), she did a sweep of the entire parking lot, and to her relief, the van was nowhere in sight.

Halfway home, though, she heard the rumbling of an internal combustion engine. She surreptitiously fished a compact mirror out of her pocket (swiped from Quinn's stuff the night before) and used it to look behind her. The van was actually following behind her just a few hundred feet down the road, and closing.

Daria was now almost paralyzed with fear. Only instinct kept her legs moving forward, and not frozen stock-still or (worse yet) trip over themselves, causing her to fall over. She only had a few moments to decide what to do.

As the van was almost upon her, she noticed one last detail in the mirror. She could read the license plate this close, and in the reflection she saw that the van had Texas plates. Instantly, she realized exactly who was in the van.

She ran.

The van floored it after her, jumping the curb in an attempt to mow her down, but she zigged out of the way and jumped over the fence of a house into its backyard. She kept running, vaulting over the fence at the rear of the lot as the van turned the first fence into splinters.

She kept this up for a good five or six minutes, playing hide-and-seek with the van among the back yards of suburbia, but she was growing more and more exhausted, years of a sedentary life subsisting mainly on junk food catching up to her in a way that didn't involve having a heart attack at the age of forty.

She spotted her salvation scrambling over one last fence and onto a side road somewhere in Lawndale: a drainage ditch that led into a small pipe buried under the road. She threw herself down and crawled into it, never minding the dirty water.

Just in time, too, as she heard the crashing sound of the van plowing through yet another fence and screeching to a stop, less than a foot directly above her. She listened as the engine idled for one minute, then two, then three, until finally it drove off out of earshot. She waited in that pipe for twenty long minutes, wondering why she wasn't hearing any police sirens (as you would expect to hear if some madman had just driven through the fences and yards of a dozen or more peoples' houses trying to run down a teenage girl) until finally she decided to peek her head out and take a look.

She was fortunate that the driver of the van hadn't just driven off a little bit and shut his engine down for a ruse, as the coast was clear. After walking for a bit, she realized she was thoroughly lost, as she hadn't been to this part of Lawndale before. Backtracking through the wrecked fences (and scooping up her backpack, which she hadn't even realized she'd lost along the way), she made her way back to familiar territory, and then broke into a dead run towards Jane's house.

Jane was home. Thank God. "Jane, Jane, he's here, he's here from Highland, and he's out to get me, oh God Jane please call the police, please Jane -"

Jane slapped her hand over Daria's mouth, counted to three with her free hand, then released her hand. "Okay, Daria, now from the top, and try to make more sense."

Daria took a deep breath. "Jane, you have to call the police. I've been stalked the past few days by somebody from my past, back in Highland. Please, call them now."

Jane frowned, until the sound of screeching tires-on-asphalt came from outside. Daria's eyes darted towards the front door in fear, which she immediately dashed towards and locked. Jane frowned and dashed downstairs. When she came back up, Daria was mashing the buttons on Jane's phone trying to get 911, and there was a heavy thumping on the door. "Don't worry, amiga. If this bastard tries to mess with you, he'll get what's coming to him." She slapped the bat she had taken from the basement into her hand for emphasis.

Daria's eyes widened in fear. "Jane, no! You don't understand! He's -"

The thumping at the door suddenly stopped. The two of them looked towards it, then back at each other. "Maybe he'll try the back -"

With one spectacular CRACK!, the door and the frame both were violently barreled through, where they slammed to the floor hard. On top of their remains stood Daria's menace - a fucking grizzly bear. Weighing in at over 1,500 pounds and armed with sharp teeth and sharper claws, it was the apex predator of America's forests.

And it was now in Jane Lane's living room.

"HOLY JESUS FUCK," Jane screamed, dropping the bat to the floor in sheer terror.

"RUN!" Daria screamed, as she grabbed Jane's hand and made for the back door.

XXXXXXXXXX

This can either stand alone as a ridiculous one-shot, or I could expand it into the realms of the really, really ridiculous. 


	2. Chapter 2

"Quick! Down here!" Jane had stopped her and Daria's escape from the crazed grizzly in the middle of the street in order to wrench loose a manhole cover. Fortunately, it was the kind that didn't require a specialized tool to open, and the two girls slipped beneath the street, just as the bear caught up to them.

It shoved one massive limb through the opening, but Daria and Jane crouched down so that they were out of reach. Roaring impotently, it retracted the paw and stuck its other forelimb down, with an equal lack of success. Looking up, Daria and Jane saw the look of pure fury in the bear's eyes as it began to try to buckle the area around the manhole, in an effort to fit inside. "Let's get out of here," Jane said, pulling a non-objectioning Daria along.

The drainage tunnels (the girls were grateful they weren't sewage tunnels) were very dark, the only source of illumination being the occasional roadside grating spaced several hundred feet apart and a crappy penlight on Jane's keychain (which she used to make sure they didn't trip on any debris or rodents).

"I think we're safe for the time being," Jane said as they walked.

"Yeah," Daria agreed, her mouth dehydrated from having done all the running she was unused to today.

"So maybe you can tell me WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" The close proximity and the amplification provided by the pipes made Daria's eardrums throb with the intensity of the words.

"What...what do you mean?" Daria asked, rubbing her abused ears.

"I mean you came in, said it was a guy STALKING you, and it was a GODDAMN BEAR." Fortunately, Jane's DeMartino-like ranting wasn't nearly as loud, sparing Daria more hearing damage.

"He...it...he was. He was stalking me."

Jane shined the light in Daria's face, which was smaller and more scared than Jane had ever recalled seeing (was, in fact, the most emotion she had ever seen on her friend's face). More tenderly, Jane said, "Daria, animals can't stalk."

Daria hugged her arms to herself, looking down at her boots. "Well, this one can," she said resolutely.

"Okay. This one can. Let's take that at face value - for now - and move on. WHY is it stalking you?"

"He -"

"Why do you keep sexing the bear, Daria?"

"Um. That's kind of the whole problem."

"What do you..." Jane shined the light in Daria's face again, which was blushing furiously. "Daria..." Jane took a big sigh and regretted ever being in the situation where she would have to say: "Were you raped by a bear?"

Daria avoided Jane's gaze while she shook her head no.

"Okay then." They walked a few more steps before Jane suddenly stopped and faced Daria again (they were under a grating, so no penlight necessary). "Daria..." Jane paused and swallowed apprehensively. "Did you have consentual sex with a bear?"

With the tiniest motions available to her, Daria's head barely moved up and down. Yes.

"What the FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

Before Daria could object and shield her ears from the loudness, Jane grabbed her by the sleeve of her jacket and shot down the pipe, just as the grating was torn away and the bear thrust its head in, its roar topping anything Jane's lungs could manage. It pulled its head out and swiped with its claws, but too late to reach Daria or Jane.

"Down there!" Jane pointed out unnecessarily to a branch in the pipe which led off away from the street. It was only when she and Daria were down the branch when she realized that in her terror she had dropped her keys (and the penlight). She was about to go back when the grating just opposite the three-way intersection was torn loose and the bear ruled out escape by that means.

"Your light!" Daria unhelpfully pointed out.

"We can't go back for it! We can only go forward!" Jane shifted her grasp from Daria's sleeve to her hand and squeezed it tightly as she shuffled forward as fast as she dared.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later (or maybe even an hour - it was impossible to tell time with no clock and no sun and the occasional echoes of the roars of an angry bear filling your soul with terror) the last of the adrenaline finally left them and they collapsed to the side of the pipe, exhausted.

After resting up for a bit, Jane continued their previous conversation. "You fucked a bear."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"It was smarter than the average bear."

"...You fucked Yogi the fucking bear."

"No, seriously, Jane. I saw him taking adult education classes at Highland High one night."

"You're shitting me, Daria."

"He may not be capable of speech, but he's still - was still - the smartest creature I knew."

"You probably broke a bear out of the zoo and led him to my house just to fuck with me and tell me this insane tale."

"Jane, the sex...oh my God, the sex."

"I don't want to hear about it."

"Do you know how big the average grizzly bear penis is?"

"I don't want to fucking hear about it, Daria."

"His cock could BEARLY fit in me!"

There was dead silence for almost a full minute. Then, the two girls broke into deranged, hysterical laughter as they clutched each other in the dark, and cried.

After ten...fifteen...God knew how many minutes...Jane pulled away from Daria and slapped her own face hard, then Daria's. The laughter cut off instantly. "This is really fucked up, you know that, Daria?"

"Yeah."

"All of that is true? Superintelligent-for-an-animal bear is after you after he broke your vagina and you broke his heart?"

"Yeah."

Jane sighed. "Okay then. Let's get moving." They began shuffling forward in the dark together, holding hands so that they not lose one another. 


	3. Chapter 3

After what seemed to be hours treading through the darkness, the two girls noticed the faintest illumination. "Light!" Jane said excitedly (and needlessly, since Daria could see just as well. "We must be almost out!" And with the progression of just a few more turns, they were standing at the exit to the drainpipe. After rubbing their eyes of the soreness of being reintroduced to light after the absense of several hours, they looked around.

"This looks familiar," Jane contemplated aloud. The pipe had come out just under the interstate, at a part where it ran through a wooded area.

Daria looked up. "Oh no," she said, indicating to the billboard. Jane looked up and groaned.

"'Only twenty miles to the Great White Shark,'" they read aloud together. They glanced at one another wearily.

"Do we really want to walk another twenty miles? Especially when our destination is a woman who believes she lived through a Steven Spielberg movie?" Daria asked, already on the verge of exhaustion from their underground trek.

"Well, we COULD walk back into town and risk bear attack," Jane said, though she was just as weary as Daria.

"Damnit."

XXXX

It was a long, boring, uneventful twenty miles.

XXXX

The bell at the tourist trap rang and Jordana looked up from the issue of Sharks Quarterly she was reading. "Oh, it's you two," she said dismissively. "The skeptics."

"You remember us?" Daria asked, a little surprised.

"I have a memory like a stainless steel bear trap!" Jordana replied triumphantly, tapping her temple for emphasis. "...'sides, you were the only people to come in that month," she muttered under her breath afterwards.

"Uh-huh," Daria nodded slowly. "Look, can we use your phone? We need to call the police, and our parents."

"Call the police? What for?" Jordana leaned forward, a bit of the crazy in her eyes.

"Daria here is being chased by a crazed, lovesick bear," Jane said, pointing at her friend for emphasis.

"Damnit, Lane, I -"

Daria never got a chance to finish the threat. "A bear, you say?!" Jordana practically flew from her spot behind the counter to the door which led...into the storage area, the girls guessed.

The two teens shared apprehensive looks, then decided to follow the nutty proprietor of the store into the back.

The backroom was larger than they had anticipated, and a lot darker. It took a few minutes to navigate through the maze of boxes ("Who the hell organizes a storage space like this, anyway?" Jane complained) until finally, they reached the only source of illumination at the back.

"I bought this off a guy on eBay," Jordana said, her voice muffled.

Her voice was muffled because she was in bear-proof armor. "The Ursus Mark IX, the absolute latest in bear protection from Hurtubise Industries. All the bears in the world could attack me simultaneously and do you know what I would do?"

After realizing she actually expected a response, Daria gave an anemic "What?"

"I'd NAP! I'd take a NICE, LONG, NAP! And after I wake up, I might make myself a SANDWICH!"

"You can store sandwich materials in your suit?" Jane asked, confused.

"No! I'd make a BEAR SANDWICH! AFTER KILLING ALL THE BEARS!"

After that, the three of them stood there, trading awkward (or manic, in Jordana's case) expressions amongst one another.

"So," Jordana finally broke the silence. "Where is this bear?"

Jane jerked a thumb behind her. "Lawndale."

Jordana looked down at the armor. "Shit. It'll take me twenty minutes to get out of this thing."

XXXX

Jordana packed the armor up in the back of her SUV. Daria and Jane were alarmed to note that there were what appeared to be firearms also stored in her SUV. "Are those -" Daria began.

"I DON'T HAVE A ROCKET LAUNCHER YOU CAN'T PROVE IT AGENT FLEMMING!" she shouted all in one breath. "Oh, sorry, force of habit," she giggled.

Daria looked uneasily at Jane. "I think it might be better if we, you know, stayed behind and called the cops, and not go with the lunatic that makes Charlton Heston look like John Denver."

Jane clapped Daria on the shoulder and gave her a squeeze. "Aw come on, this'll be fun! Besides, who would you feel safer with if your bear beau attacked us again: A cop who has a pistol and maybe a shotgun, or a woman who has bear armor, a rocket launcher, and a thirst for big game?"

Daria sighed and got into the back seat of the SUV, followed by Jane. Jordana looked at them in the rearview mirror. "Buckle up, girls, it's gonna be a bumpy ride." They barely managed to buckle their seatbelts when the Great White Shark Hunter floored it, the SUV taking off like a shot.

"Holy shit!" Jane said, looking at the trees whizzing by outside. "We have to be doing at least ninety!"

"Haven't you ever heard of a speed limit?" Daria asked, her fingers white from clenching her shoulder strap so hard.

"There's no such thing as a speed limit when there's a bearmergency!" Jordana answered, cackling with excitement at having coined a new word.

Jane decided to help take her friend's mind off the imminent threat of vehicular death. "So, Daria, why did you break it off with your ex, anyway?"

Daria frowned. "I found out he votes Republican."

Jane nodded understandingly. "Ah."

XXXXXXXXXX

I was reading the Paul Ryan VP thread in the politics forum, when -sam proposed that a trained bear would have made a better choice for the number two seat on the ticket (and then Brother Grimace gave this fic a shout-out - woot!), so naturally I decided to make the bear a registered Republican.

Bear armor is real, and was invented by Troy Hurtubise. (If he ever goes into business, he might call his company Hurtubise Industries, but it probably doesn't yet exist). Similarly, the Ursus Mark IX doesn't exist, as he's only up to Mark VII.

Interestingly, he was inspired to build the suit in the first place after an encounter with a bear that he dubbed "the Old Man" (shades of Jake, anyone?). Well, that, and the motion picture masterpiece Robocop. Yessss. 


	4. Chapter 4

It was night-time when Jordana's SUV finally stopped. Daria's eyes blinked open, yawned, and realized Jane had drooled on her shoulder a little. "Yuck." She used the collar of Jane's shirt to mop it up before she shook her friend awake. "Jane, we're back in Lawndale. Come on." After a muttered protest, Jane too arose, and they got out of the SUV to stretch.

Daria looked around. "Um." She turned to the wild-eyed wielder of weaponry, who was unloading her bear armor from the rear. "This isn't my house."

"That's right. This is the back entrance to the police station."

"What...the hell...are we doing by the back entrance to the police station?"

"Oh, I'm going to hijack the security feeds from all the security and speed cameras sprinkled around town and see if I can find the bear's whereabouts, based on the description you gave me of his van."

"...That's nice. We're going to go home now."

Jordana turned from her fiddling with the data cables in her hands. "No! You can't!"

"And just why not?"

"Because the bear will have anticipated such a move. It'll be there. Your parents are probably already dead."

Daria and Jane exchanged yet another this-woman-is-fucking-nuts look. "Then why bother tapping into the security feeds, if he's going to be at my house?"

Jordana turned back to Daria, an annoyed look on her face. "Look, who's the experienced bear hunter here?"

"None of us are!" Daria shouted back. "Screw this," she said, storming off. "I'm too damn tired and exhausted to be anywhere else but my bed at home."

The walk from Lawndale PD to Daria's house was mercifully short, expecially considering the strides Daria and Jane had made that day in the sewers and outskirts of Lawndale.

"Oh, Daria!" Helen cried out, pulling her daughter into a hug. "We were so worried!"

Jake rushed over and joined the hug, wrapping his arms around two of his favorite women. "When we heard the bear was in town..."

"Wait, you guys know about the bear?" Jane asked skeptically.

"Well, yeah, it was on the news all afternoon. 'Crazed, vindictive bear drives recklessly through neighborhood in pursuit of local teen', Quinn replied from the couch. "I haven't been able to watch America's Next Top Hottie," she added in complaint.

"No, no, I mean...you knew about the bear from Daria's past?"

"Of course, Jane," Helen answered. "Why do you think we moved up here in the first place?"

"Right," Jane sighed, wondering if Quinn was just as crazy as the rest of her family, and if she'd like to hang out sometime. "Well, I should probably go..."

"Jane, you can't go!" Jake exclaimed in fear. "What if the bear's out there?!"

"Well, Jordana did say there was a chance the bear would be waiting for me here..." Daria mentioned.

"WHAT?" Jake yelped.

"Jordana?"

"Some psychopath with a penchant for violence who drove us back to Lawndale."

"What do you mean, 'back'?" Helen questioned.

"Helen, if the bear's in the house, we've got to get out of here!"

"Jake, the bear's not in the house," Helen said, rolling her eyes on the inside.

"Can we check?" he squeaked out.

This time, Helen rolled her eyes on the outside. "Yes, Jake, we can check."

Everybody split up to efficiently check all parts of the house at once. "Wait! We CAN'T split up! The bear will pick us off one by one then! Damnit, Helen, don't you watch horror movies?"

So to soothe Jake's nerves, the five of them moved as one throughout the house. They cleared the downstairs, then moved upstairs and began checking the bedrooms.

"Quinn's head - I mean bed - is too small," Daria remarked. Quinn stuck out her tongue at Daria.

"Mom and dad's bed is too large," she said after checking her parents' room.

"And my bed is...ohshit." Daria closed the door and put her back to it, wide-eyed.

"Your bed is..." Jane urged.

"...Occupied."

"...Okay," Helen whispered. "Let's all quietly go downstairs, and..."

The roar of an SUV's engine roared into their ears as it pulled to a stop in front of the house. The sound of the front door being kicked in (it was unlocked) was next. "DARIA! BLACK-HAIRED DARIA! DARIA'S FAMILY!" Jordana screamed. "THE BEAR IS IN THE HOUSE! I REVIEWED THE FOOTAGE FROM SPEED CAMERAS, AND HE PARKED HIS VAN BEHIND YOUR HOUSE! ALSO, I MAY BE UNDER PURSUIT BY SOME ANGRY COPS, SO WE HAVE TO GO NOW!"

"Goddamnit, Jordana," Daria muttered as the grunting of an angry bear being woken up by a screaming nut came from Daria's room.

Also, Jane mouthed 'Black-haired Daria?' in disbelief.

The quartet stampeded down the stairs, as the tearing of wood indicated the bear hadn't bothered with opening Daria's bedroom door before going through it. Jordana saw them rushing towards her and opened her mouth, but before she could get a word in Daria and Jane each grabbed one of her arms and dragged her outside to her SUV and shoved her into the driver's seat while everybody else piled in.

"What are you -" Jordana almost got out.

"JUST GO!" everybody screamed at once.

"Okay, okay. Geez." She keyed the ignition and floored the accelerator.

She just missed being clipped by the bear's van, which sped out from behind the Morgendorffer household at a speedy rate itself. Jordana glanced up at it in the rear-view mirror and her eyes narrowed. "Time to test out a few accessories I installed on this thing," she smiled to herself, before pressing a button on the dashboard.

In the back, the middle part of the seat began to rise up as the roof retracted. Quinn, in her shock to scramble off the rising seat, fell face-first into Jane's lap, her thighs wrapping around Jane's skull in turn. Daria would have found the sight both hilarious and a source of excellent blackmail material, if she weren't so busy being chased for her life for, what, the third time in the day? The wind whipping around in the car and the crazy rising seat and Jordana climbing into the back made it hard to focus on -

Wait. Jordana climbing in the back? Then who the hell was DRIVING?

"Somebody should probably take the wheel," Jordana said, almost as an afterthought.

"AAAAAAAAAAAA!" Jake screamed as Helen slid off his lap and into the driver's seat, swerving just as the SUV was about to careen into a telephone pole.

Jordana climbed up on the now-elevated seat, folding out a back-rest from the front, so that she now faced the van coming up from the rear. She flicked another switch beneath the seat, and a mounted machine gun - a fucking MOUNTED MACHINE GUN - rose up in front of her. She took hold with both hands and began laughing wildly as bullets raked across the front of the van, shattering a headlight and the windshield.

The bear, undeterred, began returning fire.

"HOLY SHIT! GET DOWN!" Jordana threw herself to the floor of the backseat, followed quickly by Daria, Jane, and Quinn (the latter two having finally managed to disentangle themselves).

"HOW CAN HE BE SHOOTING AT US?" Quinn screamed.

"THE SECOND AMENDMENT!" Jordana replied. "THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS!" She opened up secret compartments in the backs of the front seats and took out Magnums (at least, they resembled the insanely powerful handgun used in the Dirty Harry movies; Daria wasn't a gun expert). "When he stops firing, give him something to think about!" Jordana passed guns out to the girls, and one to Jake in the front as well.

"EAT LEAD, YOU FURRY BASTARD!" Jake shouted as he eagerly stuck his head out the window and fired. "THIS IS FOR KNOCKING UP MY DAUGHTER!"

Jane gave Daria a sharp look. "What did he just say?"

"Later, alright?" Daria pleaded.

Jane gave a terse nod, before leaning out her own window and firing off a few rounds. Quinn, seeing Daria do nothing but lay on the floor, took Daria's gun and fired them both out the now-broken rear window of the SUV. "FUCK YEAH! I HAVEN'T SHOT A GUN IN YEARS!" she shouted with joy, the twang of the South suddenly in her voice.

"Oh God," Daria facepalmed. She looked to Jane. "Back in Texas, one road to popularity was being good with a gun. She still has two or three boxes full of ribbons and trophies up in the attic."

"Ah. At least she's on our side," Jane said, before taking a reload from Jordana (who was passing them around) and continuing to fire at their pursuer.

Suddenly, the SUV was flanked by police cruisers. "PULL OVER, JORDANA!" the loudspeaker attached to one ordered. "YOUR GUN NUT ASS IS FINALLY GOING TO PRISON!" Jordana looked up through the front, and saw the road was blocked by more of the boys in blue just a few miles down the road. Above, a police helicopter circled. "There's only one way out of this," she said to herself, before pushing past Quinn into the back seat.

"What are you doing?" Quinn asked petulantly. The line of fire was no longer clear for her.

Daria peeked up from where she was crouched and saw the well-armed woman open another secret compartment and take out...

"Oh shit." It was her rocket launcher. Daria scrambled into the back and knocked it out of Jordana's hands. "Don't do it!"

Jordana looked at Daria like she was an idiot. "Don't do what?"

"Blow a hole in the police blockade! Or...shoot down the helicopter?" At Jordana's increasingly annoyed look, Daria realized she had gotten something wrong.

"I'm going to blow the shit out of that van," she said, pointing at the offending vehicle for emphasis. "The police sure as hell don't have the firepower to stop that thing. Is it okay if I do that now?"

Daria, chastened, nodded. Jordana again hefted the rocket launcher, stuck her body up through the hole in the celing (or else the back-blast would toast everybody in the car) and fired.

The rocket struck the van dead-center. It blew the engine to smithereens and engulfed the rest of the vehicle in a ball of fire. It slowly rolled to a stop just as the SUV came up to a rest at the roadblock.

Jordana dropped the empty launcher and looked towards the three dozen armed cops pointing their guns straight at her. Except one of them wasn't a cop. "Flemming," she snarled.

"Jordana," the ATF agent growled in kind. 


	5. Chapter 5

Daria looked at the man Jordana was having a staring contest with. "Wait, Agent Flemming? What the hell is the BATF doing in Lawndale?"

"The events of today brought my team here, Miss Morgendorffer," the stern old agent replied.

"Oh. Jordana did mention a previous run-in with you -"

"No, not her!" Flemming corrected. "She just happens to be icing on the cake. No, we're here for the bear."

"...The bear."

"Your ex-boyfriend, if our file is accurate. Small world, huh?"

"...Why the HELL is a BEAR under the auspices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives?"

Flemming shook his head. "Another mistake on your part, Miss Morgendorffer. The 'B' in BATF doesn't stand for 'Bureau'."

"...It stands for 'Bears'." Daria nodded resignedly. "Of course it does."

"Bork, Hurley, I want you to debrief the Morgendorffers and Miss Lane. I'm going to handle Jordana...personally." He grinned humorlessly at the thought.

He roughly shoved Jordana against the side of the SUV as he slapped handcuffs on her, then led her to the large van that served as the mobile office of the BATF. "After all these years," he chuckled. "You won't slip through our fingers again."

"I beg to differ, Agent Flemming," she taunted as he pushed her into the van, then got in himself and closed the door. "For one, your handcuffs are still ridiculously easy to pick." She dangled the opened shackles before his eyes.

He smirked for just a second before they slammed their lips together in an unbridled display of lust. Quickly, they began tearing at each others' clothes...

XXXX

Daria and Jane sipped the hot chocolate Hurley had gotten for them after their debriefing. "So we'd been sexually active for a few months, and one week I started vomiting every morning," Daria began explaining. "I get one of those tests from the pharmacy, and it gives me the plus sign. My gynecologist confirmed it."

"What did you do?"

Daria shrugged. "I got an abortion."

"Don't you mean an abeartion?" Daria shot a hurt look at her friend. "Sorry. Continue."

"I mean...I'm not ready to have kids yet. Not until after college and I'm settled into a career. Plus, you know, horrific half-man, half-bear hybrid. I found out he was Republican after the paper printed my name, as it was allowed to do under the state's Women Should Be Chattel Slaves Act. That's when he first tried to kill me."

"Oh, Daria," Jane said, and all she could do was embrace her friend as the enormity of the events those few years ago up to tonight finally impacted her psyche.

"I loved him, Jane. I don't care that he was just a fuh-fuh-fucking animal, I loved him, and he's dead."

The angry sound of tearing metal interrupted Daria's sobbing. Eyes still leaking, the two of them stood and looked down the road.

Police and BATF alike raced down the road, guns at the ready. The van, the fires of which had been extinguished by firefighters, was tearing open from the inside. "I'm not so sure he's as dead as we thought," Jane observed.

Pistol and assault rifle fire poured into the van from all angles. Even though the weapons were of a fairly low caliber, the sheer quantity of the bullets should have been enough to put down any living thing.

Too bad the bear wasn't alive.

With one last blow, it finished tearing through the side of the van, its titanium alloy claws gutting the nearest three cops with one swipe.

Its fur was still mostly intact, but the blast and subsequent fire had torn and scorched significant portions away, revealing a metal endoskeleton. No blood seeped from its wounds. An angry red LED eye shone through where half its face had been torn off by shrapnel.

"Oh my God," Bork said disbelievingly as he stood next to the two girls for protection. "It's the Sarah Connor incident all over again."

Jane turned to him. "What? Like in The Terminator?"

Bork nodded. "Yeah, you see...oh shit, where'd your friend go?" Daria had vanished while Jane and Bork were discussing 80s sci-fi cinema.

Hearing the commotion from inside the BATF van, Flemming and Jordana rushed out. Flemming was still in his boxers, whereas Jordana wore nothing but a pair of panties and Flemming's BATF jacket (with only a few buttons snapped; it was clear that there was nothing under there but skin). "Damnit, Bork, status report!"

Bork stammered for a moment seeing his boss and his supposed arch-nemesis in a state of near-nakedness, but finally composed himself. "We've got a Sarah Connor situation, sir," he said, pointing to the bear that was readily slaughtering Lawndale's finest.

"So...a robot bear from the future, eh?"

"Wait, how do you know it's from the future?" Jane asked.

Flemming affixed Jane with a look of consternation. "Well, it sure as hell isn't a robot bear from the past. There's no evidence of high technology in the past 200,000 years of human civilization, and if the dinosaurs had high technology, they would have sent a robot dinosaur, not a robot bear."

"You know," Jane commented. "That's the stupidest logic I've ever heard that also makes sense."

Ignoring Jane's continued needling, he borrowed Bork's walkie-talkie. "Get me in touch with the Governor. We need to call in the National Guard. We need APCs, tanks, gunships, guys with rocket launchers. I want the works, you understand?" He glanced down the road, where the bear had finished depleting the ranks of the police department and was now galloping straight for the blockade. "And make it snappy."

Jane ignored Flemming barking orders out over the radio as she stared at a utility pole, the gears turning in her head. "It just might work," she said aloud.

"What?" Bork had approached Jane in order to escort her with haste away from the scene of the impending future robo-bear slaughter.

"I think I might know how to stop that bear," Jane said. "But I'll need Maurice." She turned and broke into a dead run, headed straight for her house.

Bork began running after her. "Who the hell is Maurice?"

XXXX

Flemming and Jordana ran back into the van they had just vacated, as it offered a semblance of protection from the onslaught of the robo-bear. "Shotguns," Flemming said, as he unlocked the weapon cage in the back and passed one to his would-be nemesis.

"This isn't just a shotgun," Jordana drooled. "It's the AA-12. With the drum magazine!" Jordana actually kissed the fucking thing.

Flemming smiled wanly at the affection she showed the weapon. "It's a shame we only have a few buckshot rounds for it. The other ammo is this non-lethal rubber round ordnance - not very useful against the hardware we're -"

The BATF agent was interrputed by the van suddenly crashing to the side as the robo-bear rammed it. Flemming and Jordana cried out as they landed on the van's new 'floor', barely getting a chance to sit back up before the monstrosity from the future began tearing at the old floor, its claws poking in at them. The two of them shared one last longing look.

"Did you ever think it would end this way?" Jordana asked.

"Well, my job does bring me into contact with a lot of rogue bears, so -"

"I don't mean that, not our lives. I meant us." She took Flemming's hand off of his gun for a moment and squeezed it.

"I always saw us dying together...after a massive firefight," Flemming admitted.

Jordana laughed. "The dying together part...I like that." Her eyes shone with tears that she dared not shed.

Flemming nodded, even as he sighed. "If only I wasn't a BATF agent..."

The moment ended as the robo-bear tore a hole large enough to fit its arm through. They managed to dodge away from it just in time, and when it pulled the limb back they pointed their shotguns out of the hole and went through their respective drum clips in five seconds, throwing themselves back from the hole just in time to avoid the angry robo-bear's head lunging in and snapping at them, making the hole even wider. Flemming scrambled backwards, his hand happening upon one of the unused road flares (having used most of a box in order to illuminate the roadblock earlier). He struck the flare, reached forward, and shoved it into the LED eye. The robo-bear snarled furiously, but withdrew its head to prevent further damage.

"That's it! The flares must burn hot enough to damage its endoskeleton!" Fleming grabbed two more flares (the first one having fallen outside when the bear retreated) and the two of them waited for it to make another appearance, so they could strike the new flares and burn it even further.

"Hey!"

The voice came from outside the van. Jordana and Flemming exchanged a worried look.

"Over here, you furry ass!"

That voice sounded awfully familiar.

Taking a risk, they looked out the hole in the old floor. The bear had lost all interest in the van, and was now staring at Jordana's SUV. Or, to be more precise, the figure standing in front of it.

"Hi, honey," Daria Morgendorffer said, waving one bulky arm.

"That BITCH stole my bear suit!" Jordana complained. 


	6. Chapter 6

"Look, we need to talk," Daria said, surprised that the nervousness she felt didn't enter into her voice.

The robo-bear didn't respond, only menacinly advanced on her.

"I know that we didn't really come to a clean break back in Highland - there's a lot of unresolved issues between us, like the abear-aBORtion, I mean." Daria mentally swore at Jane. "Plus how you tried to kill me, and my family fled the state. We haven't really had a chance to settle things."

The robo-bear finally reached her, and Daria cringed as he raised one claw up and swiped. The blow knocked Daria on her ass, but sure enough, the bear armor absorbed the blow just fine.

"I think we should break up."

XXXX

Jane and Bork both crouched down and heaved, lifting up the garage door with ease. Jane hit the light switch, fluorescent tubes above flickering to life. Bork looked with unease at the half-finished art projects which were scattered through the garage as Jane reached below a work bench at the back and pulled up...a chainsaw.

"What're you going to do with that?" the junior BATF agent asked. "I mean, that bear shrugged off all the small-arms fire we could throw at it. I doubt a chainsaw is going to be much more effective."

"I had an idea," Jane said, as she checked the machines' vitals. Swearing, she strided over to a nearby shelf, where at least half a dozen small gas containers were sitting. "You know that movie Small Soldiers?"

"Movie? ...Yeah."

Jane gave him an askew look. "What do you mean by THAT? ...Nevermind." She finally found a container with fuel inside. "Anyway, the climax of the film is when they blow up a transformer, creating an EMP that fried all the evil toys. All I have to do is cut down a utility pole, and when the transformer explodes, it should short out the bear!" She filled the chainsaw's gas tank, then started yanking on the starter cord.

"But that's not what really -" Bork was cut off when the chainsaw let off a mighty roar, its teeth spinning, hungry to be fed. One look at the twisted grin on Jane's face, and Bork swallowed and subconsciously took a few steps back.

Jane let the chainsaw go back to sleep, turning to Bork. "What was that?"

"I was gonna say that in real life, a transformer explosion doesn't create that kind of energy. Maybe if the transformer exploded from crash-landing directly into the bear, or if the bear was touching a wire leading to the transformer, but otherwise you're just pissing off ten thousand Maryland Electric customers."

Jane slammed Maurice down on the work bench in frustration. "Fucking Hollywood!"

"Well, to be fair, in real life, they actually had to evacuate the entire neighborhood and deploy a tactical nuke to kill all the evil toys."

Jane stared at him. "After all this is over, Agent Bork, you and I are gonna have a looooong talk, capische?" Without waiting for an answer, she picked the chainsaw back up. "Well, we may as well try precision pole-dropping, at least. I'm guessing the cavalry won't be here for a while yet, and I'm not about to let my best friend bear the unbearable."

"Heh," Bork said, before they both began running back to the war zone.

XXXX

The bear's mangled face pressed up against the mask of the suit, its hot breath (breath from where? Daria wondered) puffing against her face as it grunted in dull fury. It kept trying to pull the suit apart, or pull Daria apart, or pull Daria out of the suit so that it could pull her apart outside of the suit, but none of those avenues had borne fruit.

"You know, Jordana - the woman who owns this suit - said it could outlast any bear attack," Daria pointed out. She fought down the urge to giggle hysterically at the thought of provoking the bear any further. "She also said that she'd make herself a bear sandwich afterwards." That time, a giggle did escape, and the bear just began mindlessly clawing and pounding on her. "What do you think would go good on a bear sandwich?" she asked casually. "There's a big bottle of barbecue sauce in the fridge at home..." Daria began salivating...and sweating, as any really good barbecue sauce has that effect.

She was interrupted from her drooling by the sound of gunfire. "I'm over here, you ugly son of a bitch!" Flemming shouted.

"Hey, Agent Flemming, chill out. I've got this." Daria giggled again. She hoped the giggling wouldn't be permanent once she got out of the situation.

"Daria, you don't understand! Once the gunships arrive, they're going to shoot enough rockets up its ass to send it to the moon in a thousand different pieces!"

The thought of being exploded sobered Daria instantly, and she began struggling to get free of the bear's grip, to no avail. The cybearg seemed to grin maliciously, actually, as it tightened its grip on her upon hearing the news. "Okay, Agent Flemming, now he's got a death-grip on me. Any ideas?"

Suddenly, the sound of a helicopter's rotors filled her ears, and she nearly lost control of her bowels as she was sure she was about to be incinerated and pulverized. After a moment, though, light shone down, and Daria realized it was the police helicopter that had flanked them during the high speed chase. The sound of rifle fire indicated that they had a sharpshooter onboard, and relief filled Daria as the bear shifted its weight off of her.

Her hopes were dashed as it ripped a road sign right out of the concrete and threw it like a missile. It sliced through the cockpit, neatly separating the pilot from his arms and legs, the helicopter spinning wildly out of control and exploding upon impact in seconds.

The bear beared down on Daria once more. "Shit."

XXXX

Bork and Jane arrived back on the scene just in time to witness the helicopter crash. "I feel like I should say something clever and action movie-y about that," Bork commented.

"Can that shit!" Jane chastised, moving closer to the blockade...or rather, the BEARicade. Peeking over a cop car, she watched as Flemming ineffectually emptied another clip from his pistol into the thing from the future. Sensing movement in her peripheral vision, Jane turned and saw Jordana crawling out of the overturned BATF van.

In Jordana's hand was an improvised sticky bomb. She'd found a concussion grenade and a tire patching kit, and had covered the grenade with the sticky goopy crap in the kit, leaving enough of the grenade bereft of stickiness so she could comfortably hold it. Jane watched slack-jawed as she fearlessly leapt upon the bear, slammed the sticky bomb into its fur right in the middle of its back, and yanked the pin just as the bear backhanded her off of it. The grenade exploded, crippling the bear's hind legs, as they locked into place.

"Perfect," Daria griped from beneath the bear. "Now not only am I stuck under a half-paralyzed bear, but now I'm fucking deaf!"

"Hey, I'm trying to save your miserable ass!" Jordana swore back.

Jane swore herself, as the bear was positioned too far from the nearest utility pole to be whacked by the transformer mounted on it. She turned to Bork. "Looks like we'll have to go with Operation: Live Wire," she told him. "Can you shoot one down?"

Bork grimaced. "I'm not a very good shot," he confessed.

"Well try, goddamnit!"

Bork swallowed, drew his pistol, took a bead on the power line, and began firing.

XXXX

From her hiding spot in an alley, Quinn watched Bork, and shook her head at the pitiful stance Bork had. He couldn't hit a barn if he was standing inside of it! She knew her sister only had one chance: herself. She knew the helicopter had crashed a street or two down, but had watched the poor sharpshooter fall out just before. She turned away and shoved the dumpster beneath the fire escape, using it to climb up and up until she was on top of the building. Saying a silent prayer for the dead man, she took his rifle, checking the clip and the chamber. "One left," she muttered to herself. "Of course." She took a position on the edge of the rooftop, glancing down at Jane and Bork, both of them looking depressed (because Bork had missed entirely like an idiot).

She licked her thumb, wetting down the rifle's sight so as to better catch the light and help her line up the shot. The power line was visible (barely), thanks to the little fires and strobing lights atop the emergency vehicles. She focused the sights on the miniscule target, closed her eyes, feeling no wind to push her bullet in an errant direction. She opened her eyes again, swallowed her nervousness, and exhaled.

She pulled the trigger.

XXXX

Jane and Bork jerked their heads at the unexpected gunshot. To their utter surprise, the power line fell to the ground, neatly severed. Looking up across the street, they saw Quinn stand up, rifle in one arm, a cocky grin on her face. "That's how you shoot in Texas," she razzed Bork.

"Thanks, Quinn!" Jane shouted. "Somebody plug that fucking bear in!" She revved up Maurice once, twice, three times before it roared to life in her hands. Her face split with her devilish grin as the chainsaw bit into the wood of the utility pole.

With a glance, Flemming took in what Jane was doing, and immediately understood her plan. He ran forward, grabbed the downed line, turned, and leapt up on the bear's back just as the utility pole began tipping over. Wrapping one arm around the bear's neck, he shoved his other hand forward...straight into the bear's mouth. "Smile, you son of a-"

The transformer struck the ground, exploding (and drowning out Jordana's complaint: "Hey, that's MY line!"). A massive surge of electricity was shoved through the line, filling Flemming and the bear with enough juice to...fuck metaphors, it fried the shit out of both of them. Flemming was blown backward with tremendous speed, landing a ways down the street, prone.

Jane let Maurice drop as she and Bork raced forward to the now-dead robo-bear. "I don't think you should touch -" Bork's complaint died as Jane shoved the bear as hard as she could, trying to move it. He shrugged and joined her in shoving, met soon after by Jordana, and soon after that by Quinn, who used the rifle as a lever.

"I've got an idea!" Jane said. She began to unfasten the bear suit and take it off around Daria (who had also taken a bit of a jolt - she was alive, but unconscious). Jordana reached for the discarded armor, but one sour look from Jane and she continued to help pull Daria free from the hulking ruin.

"Gunships inbound, thirty seconds," Bork's radio squawked.

"WHAT?" Bork grabbed the radio and started shouting into it. "Stop! Abort! Go back! God damnit!" He chucked the radio and everybody redoubled their efforts. Finally, they pulled Daria free of the armor (and the bear) and started running just as the sound of the military choppers reached them. They threw themselves behind the barricade just as the barrage of rockets struck home, obliterating the bear, the bear armor, and most of Jordana's SUV.

"My car!" Jordana cried out.

XXXX

After the gunships withdrew, Bork broke cover, running past the smouldering hole in the street, to the fallen form of his boss and mentor. He checked for a pulse, found none. "Come on, Chief, don't die on me," Bork prayed as he began administering mouth-to-mouth. "Breathe, damnit!" he urged while giving chest compressions. He repeated the process a few more times. "Dolan, PLEASE!"

"You've never called me by my first name before," Flemming croaked out, a crooked smile on his face, before he began coughing deeply.

"Oh thank God," Bork said, wiping a few errant tears from his face.

XXXX

Jane and Quinn watched with curiosity as a limousine drove up to the roadblock. Jordana also watched, though with contempt. It stopped in front of the three of them, and the door opened up.

"You little snot," Jordana spat.

"Is that any way to treat your old friend?" Richard Dreyfuss smiled smugly.

"You're not gonna take THIS one away from me!" Jordana angrily declared. "My boyfriend slash nemesis will back me up! Along with these girls!" Jordana grabbed Jane and Quinn and pulled them to her in an incredibly awkward hug.

Richard Dreyfuss laughed. "You forget, Jordana, you're a wanted woman across the country. You try and fight me on this, you'll end up in prison. Unless your boyfriend over there is actually the President and can pardon you..." He chuckled at the dark look on her face. "That's what I thought."

Quinn wrenched free of Jordana's grasp and pointed an angry finger at the actor. "Now listen here, buddy. You might be able to take this story away from...whoever the hell this is, but you can't take it away from Daria! She's all about stories...she's a BRAIN!"

Richard Dreyfuss gazed thoughtfully at Quinn for a moment. Then, he pulld out a checkbook and wrote down a number. He showed Quinn the check. "Does your sister care THAT much about stories?"

Quinn's mouth dropped open when she saw how many zeroes were on the check. "Holy shit," she whispered. "Hell no she doesn't!" She swiped the check before he could change his mind.

Jordana snarled in anger at the betrayal, pushing past the two girls, until she was up in Dreyfuss' face. "Look here, you little snot, you may have won this round...and the last round...but I'll get mine someday! Mark my fucking words!"

"Goodbye, Jordana," Richard Dreyfuss said with a parting smug smile, before getting back in the limo.

"What the ever-loving FUCK just happened?" Jane asked aloud.

XXXX

"So, all movies are real?" Jane asked.

Bork shook his head. "No, not all movies. Just...a lot of movies, like Jaws, and Terminator. And Hollywood changes a lot of the details around frequently."

"Like Small Soldiers."

"Yeah."

"How come people don't know about this? Is it a conspiracy?"

Bork shook his head. "Nah. People are just stupid. If they bothered to watch the credits of a movie all the way through, most of them say 'Based on a true story' in big letters."

"Ah."

"Like you saw, Hollywood usually buys up all the rights to the strange event, with a clause that those involved can't ever tell about what happened, or they'll be sued."

Jane massaged her temples. "Between finding out that my best friend is into bestiality with a robot from the future and finding out Bad Movie Night's been a long string of documentaries, this has been one fucked up day."

Bork eyed the ambulance where Flemming was getting checked over by a doctor (he had insisted he didn't need hospital care). "Yeah, I know how you feel. I gotta go ask my boss something, Jane, I'll talk to you later."

He walked up to Flemming. "Hello, Bork. Looks like mission accomplished."

Bork shrugged. "I guess. The bear is dead, but Jordana got away."

"Damnit!"

"Oh, cut the act, sir. You were fucking her in the van!"

"It's not an act, Bork. We happen to be nemeses on the opposite sides of the law who have consentual sex. If I ever manage to catch her, I'll make sure she ends up in prison." A naughty smile bloomed on Flemming's face, looking out of place. "One that allows conjugal visits." His smile disappeared as he glared at Bork. "Besides, you're being just a little hypocritical, considering what I saw you get up to with Dallas Grimes."

Bork paled. "Uh...you saw that, Chief?"

Flemming nodded. "I also saw her steal both the handcuff keys and your car keys after you fell asleep. Damnit, Bork, a government agent always engages in afterglow pillow talk with his lover, especially to prevent situations like those!"

Bork was now blushing furiously. "Uh...sorry, chief. Won't happen again."

Jane walked up to them. "Hey, guys, I had a question. How did Daria get pregnant?"

"What?" Flemming asked.

"Well, you knew that Daria dated the bear, and you knew that the bear got her pregnant. If it was a robot, how did it get her pregnant?"

Flemming was speechless for a moment. Then: "...I didn't know Daria was pregnant." He turned to the paramedics. "We need to get to Cedars of Lawndale. NOW!"

XXXX

Daria awoke gradually. The aroma of 'sterile' and the sound of beeping and the sensation of needles in her veins and her bare ass touching the bed all told her that she was in a hospital (wearing one of those embarrassing-as-hell gowns with no backs, to boot). She turned and saw Quinn and her parents in a deep sleep, the three of them sitting upright in those impossibly uncomfortable hospital chairs. They must have been really tired.

She laid back herself and tried to sleep, but couldn't, due to the residual adrenaline still in her bloodstream from the day's events. ...Was it really only a day? Holy crap.

A nurse walked in, smiling. "How are you feeling, dear?" she asked kindly.

"Like I just spent the day running for my life, being shot at, electrocuted, and near exploded," Daria replied in her usual monotone.

The nurse giggled. "Sounds like you had a bad day!"

"Yeah. Plus, my ex-boyfriend died, which was kind of a bummer, even though he was a jerk who tried to kill me, and a bear, and a robot, and from the future."

"Ah," the nurse frowned. "Sorry to hear that."

Daria looked at the TV, playing infomercials at mute volume.

"It's time for your barium enema," the nurse said.

Something in the woman's voice spooked Daria, and she turned to the woman, whose smile had returned with full force, and then some. "Uh, I don't think I'm scheduled for that procedure," Daria said, her voice warbling just a bit with nervousness.

"Get it? A BEARium enema?" The nurse chuckled, her smile growing larger and larger, and Daria noticed that she didn't have the teeth of a human woman, but of a male bear. The flesh of the face began splitting open, revealing not muscle and sinew, but a coat of brown fur.

"Oh Gramma, what big teeth you have," Daria moaned out, trying to sink through her bed.

The bear shook its head ruefully. "Wrong fairy tale animal, my love," he said, before reaching down and...

XXXX

Minutes later, Flemming, Bork, and Jane burst into the hospital room. The other three Morgendorffers were still asleep in their chairs, but Daria was gone from the bed. Bork noticed the discarded nurse disguise on the ground. "Chief," he said, pointing to it.

Jane went around the bed and shook Helen, Jake, and Quinn awake. "Where's Daria?!" she asked. "Didn't you assholes see her get taken?"

"Taken? What? Where?" they all said, overlapping each other.

Flemming walked over to the window and looked out it, brooding. "Have the hospital searched," he ordered Bork, though in his heart he knew Daria and the bear were long gone.

The long night had just begun.

XXXXXXXXXX

The end! I considered stopping the chapter after the gunship strike and having everything after be the epilogue, but writing it out was so fun I couldn't stop!

Once I decided to put Jordana into the story, the scene where she confronts Richard Dreyfuss was a 'must-write'. And the implications (Jaws being real) opened the door for a few other plot points as well.

I do intend on doing a sequel. But...I have no idea what the hell will actually happen in it. I've a few weird ideas (as if that's a surprise), though. We'll see.

I decided to see if Maryland Electric was a real company, and it is...albeit based in Michigan, hahaha. And they're a maintenance company, they don't actually generate power. 


End file.
